“Bouffant cap”? As an accounting person (who used to pay for the bouffant caps at our lab animal facility), I tend to think in fiscal years, so right now we are in 2007. I’ve lately been doing a lot of Visio stuff and of course have been anal about lining everything up exactly. So it bugs me to see diagrams where the preparers did not take such care, published in manuals which get disseminated all over!! grr
Did you know that urbandictionary.com defines “peson” as “a perky nipple”? That makes me happy for some reason. Maybe it’s just hard (ha!) to say “perky nipple” without smiling…
Computers work in 8’s - a byte is 8 bits, a World Wide Name is 8 bytes, a Word is usually some multiple of 8
Captured packets will display in hex: 23 201913 FFFFD 01 990000 11 00 0000 8001 00A1 00000000EOFt
(I just made that up, I’m not sure it’s a valid response)
I’ve got a similar one. I’m a Telecommunications Hardware Design Engineer, and most of my job is writing and testing the code that becomes our chips. I use a text editor called vi (actually gvim) to edit the code. vi uses the <esc> key to switch between command and edit mode. I often find myself hitting <esc> when done typing in other programs. This can sometimes have disasterous results, like erasing everything I wrote (Internet Explorer) or closing a window, erasing everything I wrote (Outlook).
That’s it! I was kicking myself because I order the damn things but blanked on the name.
I get confused with the fiscal year stuff. My heart goes out to you accounting folks.
Another weird mental thing I have developed: give me a letter-number combination and I’ll attach a mouse to it. Bingo would be hell for me.
“B12!”
Male, born 13.6.06
“A92”
Female, positive trangenic, died 16.10.06
“G27”
Huh? We haven’t gotten that many mice yet. It ain’t one of mine.
I’m a special effects artist. I do stuff like explosions, smoke, and other environmental effects, for games.
When I see a particularly spectacular sunset, I find myself thinking, “That’ll need to be desaturated a bit- nobody will believe it.”
If I see a large plume of smoke, I find myself wondering if I could do it in fewer particles.
I’m always impressed when I see a big waterfall- falling water is expensive, in terms of fill rate and particle count.
On a cruise several years ago, my wife came up behind me and asked me, as I was looking at the surface of the water, “You’re trying to figure out how to model that surface effect, aren’t you? Geek.”
I love this thread. I love the weird replies. I love the peculiar ways so many of you think. I love the strange things you do because your interesting jobs have trained you to do them.
I was going to start going through the thread naming names from people whose posts have particularly delighted me, but there would be so many I was afraid twickster would acuse me of doing it just for post-padding.
And no, I’m still not going to tell any of you what my job does to my brain.
Never. With a post count like mine? Tease, maybe, but never accuse.
It’s absolutely a mutual admiration society, my dear.
I can tell, usually within +/- 5, whether a stack of bills ($1, $5, $10, $20) is a whole bundle or not. I can usually grab close to a whole bundle out of the drawer by feel. I can tell you instantly whether a bill is fake. I’m always in mystery shopper mode when I’m shopping, instantly judging what’s wrong and what’s right in all sorts of stores, from service quality to cleanliness – even stuff most people never even think about, like whether there are cigarette butts in the ashtrays outside and whether the racks of shopping bags are nice, full, and straightened.
When I’m grocery shopping, I can tell by the price whether something’s cost is on its way up or down. I can usually tell which manufacturer’s paid the most for shelf space in various stores – and I can tell you it’s not the same in each. When I put something in my cart, I think of products that would compliment it and could be displayed next to it on an endcap to increase sales of both. While I’m walking through a store, I have to fight my compulsive urge to straighten out the products on the shelves. I can tell you the difference between “meaty” and “meat”, “chocolatey” and “chocolate”, “cheese food”, “cheese product”, and “cheese”. I can look in the cart of a fellow shopper and guess what their family looks like – whether they have kids; whether they’re married or divorced; whether they’re poor, middle-class, or upper middle; whether both parents work; whether Mom’s on WIC or not, etc.
As a side effect of the neighborhoods I’ve worked in, I can usually pick out the potheads, meth addicts, heroin addicts, and crackheads in the crowd as well.
Back when I worked as a tester for a combat-driving video game, I used to drive home noticing the polygons of the cars around me, and -continuously- reminding myself that I did NOT get ‘bonus points’ for running drivers off the road.
[QUOTE=Bambi Hassenpfeffer]
When I’m grocery shopping, I can tell by the price whether something’s cost is on its way up or down. I can usually tell which manufacturer’s paid the most for shelf space in various stores – and I can tell you it’s not the same in each. When I put something in my cart, I think of products that would compliment it and could be displayed next to it on an endcap to increase sales of both. While I’m walking through a store, I have to fight my compulsive urge to straighten out the products on the shelves. QUOTE]
I used to have some of these skills. But it’s been over seven years now since I worked for HT, so some of them have faded. Thank god.
Computer Programmer - This profession has decimated my math skills. I can no longer remember basic arithmetic, of the kind one memorizes. I used to be pretty good at math, too. Now I can’t add 6 and 7 without actually thinking about it, and I get it wrong a lot even then.
Also, minor errors where one miscounts by one or two in either direction happen so frequently that I am no longer bothered by making them; this is true irrespective of order of magnitude. One simply fixes the error and carries on. So occasionally I’m like “What, it was $400, not $300? Meh, off-by-one error, who cares.”